Out now: EL coat, Coming soon: EL hat

[Render] says his coat is simply “enhanced with EL wire”, but we know the truth. He’s secretly an alien that can’t block out all of his glowing green skin with a the black coat. No? Fine,

You can put away the sewing machine, [Render] simply used a needle and fishing line to attach ~50-70 foot of electroluminescent wire to the outside of a coat he picked up at a local clothing shop. Solder and program in an inverter and controller board thanks to SparkFun, and you’re ready to go.

Just double check all your connections, high voltage directly on your person is not fun. Trust us.

Heh, I made something like this a few years ago for halloween using EL wire meant for PC case mods (spools were n/a at the time). I had a full body outline, gloves/fingers outlined and a gas mask with the eyes, mouthpiece and a faux mouth outlined. I also used fishing line as the thread

@RenderMan I didn’t do as fine a detail as you, but I’ve linked the page in question to my name on this post. Forgive the non-details and atrocious page(s)!

Burning man has a has a huge EL crowd for many years (from decorating cars to clothing) I took my idea from seeing a Daft Punk show a long time ago. I didn’t have a helmet to do up like them, but did have a gas mask and it turned out pretty well! I have them in the boot of my car still lol

I had made a Tron suit for Burning Man a number of years ago, using EL wire attached via nylon thread. It died after 20 minutes of my walking about, as the EL wire didn’t like flexing at all, and shorted out internally. EL wire on flexible clothes is a fragile thing, so you need to be sure to avoid flexing as much as possible.

@Revar I learned this lesson as well. My gloves died that NYE from too much flexing in the fingers. The internal construction is a single solid core wire (power) that is very susceptible to metal fatigue wrapped in plastic, powdered w/ EL material then a very thin wire (power) loosely wrapped around that then finally the outer (colored) plastic sheath…

It’s best to make everything in segments so there are “joints” where flexing will occur. I didn’t have any issues with the wires around my knees, elbows or armpits…yet! I hope to get off my lazy ass and write all this up someday :o

@Jake
I’m pretty sure he kept that in mind. It’s not like his body is made of origami paper and hes folding himself into a swan.
The only area I could see the EL wire bending too much is around the elbows. Any thick fabric long sleeve will pull up when the elbow is at a bend. It’ll give the el glow wire enough slack.

I like the bloodpressure sensor idea JimXugle, but bloodpressure is hard to measure needing time and pumps and what not, so how about a heartrate increase sensor, set it to you default resting rate and if it increases the glow increases, might be amusing and doable.

Needle and fishing line was used as the cost of the refills for a buttoneer, as well as availability.

In order to secure it tight enough, I figured I’d need to attach it every half inch or so (more on corners). For 55 feet of wire, I’d need about $100 of refills. Fishing line was about $3 and worked great.